Sunday, 14:22

Since taking a frustrated leave of absence from attending or serving in church late last year, things have been so-so. I have said it before, one more time for good measure. Spirituality and I are an inseparable paradigm. I run from it sometimes but invariably the pull to realign myself with something profound draws me back in untold mystical ways.

Recently the nag to flip through my faith book, the need to pray, and attend church found me 5 rows from the front. Center. Stage left. It was kind of surreal. Words that plagued my thoughts all week kept popping up in the songs, sermon and news broadcasts. The most overwhelming of the lot, the statement, “No-one should be discarded or written off as helpless.” This valid but seemingly ordinary statement comes on the back of a random quiz I took on Facebook the day before. The results, correctly, showed that my success blocking negative talk centered around my sense of unworthiness. I was stunned that the quiz nailed my default setting exactly. Even more alarming is the same above statement following a discussion in the salon about my faulty faith practice. I have, once again, gotten stuck on trying to be better for my Higher Power instead of allowing myself to simply receive grace, love and blessings because I am loved. None of us can be perfect. It is in our imperfections that we can find the ability to love other imperfect people like ourselves. Those that have read my blog, ‘Mighty You’, will understand the difficulty for me to receive help, compliments or goodness. Like many of us, I am living wounded. Wounds that often cloud my abilities to create a life that my talents certainly warrant. Never mind the mere fact that I am alive. Simply alive.

It is with this single authority that I want to write this blog. Or rather feel instructed to write this blog. That authority is this, ‘At 43 lots of stuff has happened. Some my fault. Some not. But from the perspective of living hurt and fighting to overcome I can say I am as authoritative as the next. Even in my failings.’ Afterall I am, like you, still here.

The heated race factions, avoidance political landscape, corruption, seemingly endless lists of poor leaders and deplorable self-greed has South Africa and our globe in a kind of deadlock situation. Doomed if we do and doomed if we don’t!

What I mean is this:

With every side arguing it’s rights as more important than others, we all seem to have forgotten for a moment, as I have lately, that the log in our eyes must be addressed before the splinters in others can be removed.

SO HOW?

Rather than pretending that things are not out of kilter and growing that yucky guilty feeling inside, perhaps the answer is to accept that each of us is to blame, directly or indirectly. Let’s all be honest our nations are tense. We need to know eachother better. Don’t you think? In the Gentleman’s Gazette article, ’53 Questions to Get to Know Someone’, by Sven Raphael Schneider interesting and useful insights are shared if we follow through with our claims of being an inclusive society, legitimately.

SO WHAT IS INCLUSIVE?

By sheer definition the implication of inclusivity suggests that compromise may be a necessary and a valuable tool to reach a more inclusive, equal opportunities and more civilized and just society. This is not to say that we put up with second-best but that we first learn to love and let HIGHER POWER be HIGHER POWER.

SO THE BIG QUESTION IS, ‘WHY DON’T WE WANT TO INTEGRATE, COMPROMISE AND RE-EVALUATE OUR THINKING, COMFORT ZONE AND PREJUDICES?

I found this above quote and I think it speaks volumes to myself and the world we all are living in. This present moment. Crazy. Hectic. Frustrated. Right?

Laying in bed this arvie, I wondered to myself, how could I a simple citizen on this planet try make a difference in the my life and the lives of many others. The 12 Steps of Recovery seems like a great place to start. I have seen incredible changes in my own life through the 12 Step Program. Although I am far away from being, 💯%, my authentic self, as most of us are, I certainly am not who I was 6 years ago. I love the fact that I have had the freedom to experience the consequences of my choices. No human, government or religion has been able to stop me from facing the results of my choices. I am learning on the job, like all of us.

A QUICK STORY:

I was asked to write an essay in rehab describing whom I thought God was. Instead of writing the answers I knew were expected of me, God is Just, God is I Am, etc, I wrote it from the point of view that many would write. God is dictatorial, contradictory and cruel, etc. Yes, you guessed it. I got rapped on the knuckles, and instructed to look through my faith book to all the places my HIGHER POWER described themself. I didn’t get so far. Actually my whole perception about myself changed from the 5th word in the Bible. Created. Weird right? Let me explain. Up until that moment, 37, I had been living under the guilt of being gay and creative. Years of bullying, violence and abuse had me feeling ashamed about being creative. The crazy part is that everything I am is creative. So I was living a kind of psychological hell because the very thing I am is the very thing I hated. It somehow meant that I was sub-human because I am a creative guy. This translated into my sexual-preference. For years I was a flapper, sister, queen whatever you want to call it. I tried to hide the hatred of my creative being by overdoing my identity as a gay guy. Anyhow. 37, rewriting an essay, stumbling onto the first 5 words in the Bible, things began to change. I am still gay but my identity has less do with my orientation but rather myself as myself. Creative.

“(IN THE BEGINNING) [GOD] {CREATED}….

What I realized, at 37, is that only 2 things exist outside of creativity…..Time (in the beginning) & …… God. I realized that everything else after that is creative. The way we make money, make money. The explanations of scientific reason. The way we breathe, think, move…and love. In that moment I started to learn to love and accept that not only did I deserve to be alive, because I am alive, but that it is ok to be creative and love it.

6 YEARS ON:

My relapses are getting further and further apart and less damaging, I am calling my own shots, learning to be responsible for myself, even though I am on the verge of losing everything. I wouldn’t give this last year back for all the money in the world. I have learnt to endure for longer and fight harder for myself. This is pretty miraculous for a guy who until only 6 years ago thought that his best offering to the world was in a coffin. 6 feet under. I have a blog, as an untrained writer, that is read somewhere across the globe daily and I am still here fighting to grow as a human, to love better and do my bit to leave our world better than much of the love I received. Do I fail? Uhm, are you reading this?

All I do know are these 2 things:

Spiritual matters are real!

The 12 Step Recovery Program is worth our world taking a shot with because it is both universally applicable and personal in it’s philosophy. It may very well be the only tool that transcends our thinking, brings us back to human and creates a methodology to heal ours ourselves and others around us!

STEP 1 STARTS WITH ADMIT.

So I will go first and trust that many more will follow suit. I have already started by stating my character defect on Facebook.

For years I have hidden behind inferiority, believing that others were better than me. As of this moment I am asking my HIGHER POWER to help me to change that in me and to do it miraculously. I need a miracle because I am tired of living in the world that reaffirms my negative belief of humans and myself. We are not only capable of hate. In fact most of what we have these days started with an idea to make things better. Yes, like me, things get a bit twisted but we can change it.

ALL I ASK THAT YOU HELP ME MAKE THIS BLOG GO VIRAL INTERNATIONALLY BY SHARING IT. HOPEFULLY WE CAN PRAGMATICALLY BEGIN TO HEAL THE HATRED WE FACE EVERYDAY. IT STARTS WITH EACH OF US ADMITTING!

I guess if it is true that ‘I need to be the change in the world I want to see, it begins with me.’ So I guess that from now on like the particular sentence in a random sermon, 5 rows back, center, stage left: “No one should be discarded or written off as helpless,” rings true for me and I know rings true for most us.

We all know what rejection feels like. IT DAMN WELL HURTS LIKE A ……..! I am believing that a miracle will turn my little rent-a-chair business, broken reputation, self-loathing and human despising will change.

Click the link below to be reminded of another call to fight for life.

Published by JustArionPersonally

We each have a story to tell. This is my personal one. I hope to be honest in my humanity. I hope to love you through my story and encourage you to be your best you. Believer!
View all posts by JustArionPersonally

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